ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the representation of the convent and the academy as both educational institutions and intentional communities that provide a viable alternative to marriage, enforced vocation or single life. It explores the construction of emancipatory spaces in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The convent and academy are imagined as educational and reformist institutions for women to repair the damage of a long-standing neglect of education. In addition to its specific function, these are also historically and politically determined spaces, on the one hand, woven into the controversial history of nunneries and on the other hand, ideologically linked to the historical debates about education, sexuality and the role of women in society. The architectural space guarantees that the function of the secular convent as a reforming and educating institution within the ‘discourses of patriarchy is performed. Although frequently brought together in the history of educational institutions, these projects imagine quite different models of female communities.
